In order to be equal, we must be unequal. To tell the plain truth is to lie. To include is to be exclusive. To suggest that we all live according to the same rules is to be divisive.
Those are the essential points repeated endlessly by opponents of the Michigan Civil Rights Initiative. Consider this, from The Michigan Daily:
"This ballot initiative is a conscious attempt to defraud and deceive the Michigan voters. Its aim is to ban all affirmative action in Michigan and nullify the Supreme Court decision in Grutter v. Bollinger," said National BAMN Co-Chair Luke Massie.(1)There is not a single true statement in Massie's remarks. The petitions describe the MCRI as "a proposal to amend the constitution to prohibit the University of Michigan and other state universities, the state, and all other state entities from discriminating or granting preferential treatment based on race, sex, color, ethnicity, or national origin." I'm sure every voter in Michigan knows exactly what that means and will vote accordingly. It will not eliminate forms of affirmative action that involve outreach, only those forms that involve race or gender preferences in the state of Michigan. Other states will continue to be allowed some use of such preferences according to Grutter v. Bollinger, no matter what Michiganians do or don't do at the polls on the MCRI question.
Detroit area activist the Rev. Horace Sheffield III was even more flamboyant in his opposition: "This is about denying people who should have the same opportunity to receive equal treatment and equal benefits as anyone else in this country from having those . . . It is being cloaked under the guise of equal protection under the law. It's racist, it's exclusionary, it's divisive. . . ."(2)
Contrary to Sheffield's remarks, the MCRI is not about denying "equal treatment" to anyone, it is about insisting on it for everyone. It is not "cloaked under the guise of equal protection under the law" it is an instrument that will move us closer to that ideal. It is not "racist" because it applies to all regardless of race. It is not "exclusionary" because it includes everyone.
In Memphis, Tennessee there is a National Civil Rights Museum, part of which occupies the old Lorraine Motel where the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. was shot while standing on a balcony. The museum includes a number of exhibits illustrating events from the '50s and '60s. There is a bus just like the one Rosa Parks refused to go to the back of. There is a replica of the jail cell where King wrote a famous letter to some of his fellow clergymen.(3) The actual rooms, 306 and 307, where King spent his last day are set up just as they were.
A couple from Michigan visited the museum recently and wrote a letter to their local newspaper about what they saw. They described a gruesome photo display of a lynching. They suggested that opponents of affirmative action visit the museum.(4)
I don't have the time or money for a trip to Memphis, but I did check out the museum on the Web. I learned a few things. I was inspired to look up the Rev. Martin Luther King's "Letter from Birmingham Jail." It is an awesome read. I highly recommend it. But many horrors of the past have been addressed in the past. I'm sure anti-lynching laws were much more effective in ending that practice than affirmative action would have been.
Those who turned the social contract of Civil Rights into the cargo cult of race and gender preference never fail to glory in the miseries and injustices of the past. That's because there is nothing going on in the present that would actually justify their weird little power trips. Affirmative action started out a reasonalbe idea to get things going, maybe tipping the scales just a little, all for a good cause. It has now become an entrenched interest of a self-serving clique, which has seriously deformed the educational institutions of our society. In academia and elsewhere it serves the interests of white female managers and administrators and their white male fellow travelers. It serves the interests of upper middle class blacks who profit from it quite nicely often enough. If it really served the interests of the poor and miserable in a demonstrable way, I would have a completely different attitude towards it. I don't oppose the general concept of giving a break to the downtrodden. I oppose the monstrous thing affirmative action has turned into.
As the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. wrote from his cell, "Lamentably, it is an historical fact that privileged groups seldom give up their privileges voluntarily."(5) That is as true today as ever, and the remedy we have is the remedy that was openly fought for and won about forty years ago by a people who were not asking for equal success or equal wealth but simply equal treatment by the agencies of the state, public accomodations and educational institutions. It's time to take Civil Rights out of the museum and put it back into practice.
NOTES:
If you wish to link to this article, try copying and pasting:
<a href="http://m3peeps.org/rismcri.htm">Remarks in Support of the Michigan Civil Rights Initiative</a>